1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print driver, and more particularly, to a print driver capable of generating output conforming to the SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) standard.
2. Description of the Related Art
Printers are typically interfaced to a client device, such as a computer, through a software module commonly referred to as a print driver. A print driver is generally accessible from within an application program (e.g., Microsoft Word and Excel or Corel WordPerfect) and converts output from an application program (e.g., GDI or Graphic Device Interface) into a format (or language) that a printer understands. Examples of such a format, or printer language, include PostScript from Adobe and PCL (Printer Control Language) from Hewlett Packard.
While current print driver output may be used to generate output for printing by a printer, such output is unsuitable for display. To display the print output generated by the print driver, the print output must be converted to a suitable display format, or existing applications must be altered to include the ability to generate a display using the print output. In a display environment, such conversion or generation may result in unacceptable response times (i.e., the time it takes to provide display output in response to input). Further, since there are multiple print output formats, several different conversion or generation programs, or one large program that incorporates each, is needed.
In addition, like a programming language, a printer language (e.g., PostScript) has a specific syntax and requires an interpreter to interpret the output generated by the print driver. Typically, such print output consists of several lines of “code” which results in a print output file being quite large. This is disadvantageous where, for example, the output is to be sent over a communications network (e.g., the World Wide Web).
Further, many applications, such as browser applications, are not designed to generate display output using print output. For example, most browser applications are designed to generate a display page of data, typically received via the World Wide Web, that has a display format. For example, most browsers are able to understand a markup language format such as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML).
A markup language, such as HTML, defines a set of data elements and their corresponding attributes as well as a hierarchical structure that allows some data elements to be defined within other data element definitions in an HTML-defined document. Other hierarchical languages that are used to define display data include the XML (Extensible Markup Language) and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) languages. However, these markup, or hierarchical, languages have traditionally been limited to defining display data.
There is currently no ability to generate output that conforms to a single, standardized format (or language) where the output can be both displayed and printed.
Thus, it would be beneficial to have the ability to generate print output that conforms to a standard format that is able to be both printed and displayed.